With its strategic plan 2030, Volkswagen intends to combine electric and profitable

From “Das Auto” to “New Auto”… The world number 1 in the automobile industry, the Volkswagen group, unveiled its 2021-2030 strategic plan (called “New Auto”) on Tuesday July 13th, which gives pride of place to electric and digital, which, says the manufacturer to the twelve brands, will allow it to increase its profitability and achieve an operating margin of 8-9% by 2025, against 7-8% previously envisaged and 7% today.

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Confirming an unrivaled 2021-2025 investment effort of 73 billion euros in the essentially electric mobility of tomorrow (i.e. half of total investments), Volkswagen estimates that, in less than ten years, 50% of its sales will be purely electric vehicles and that by 2040, almost 100% of its new vehicles in major markets will be zero CO emissions2. The company’s profits should gradually migrate from thermal vehicles to electric vehicles, and the differential in terms of the cost of an internal combustion engine should disappear in two or three years.

This transition from one model to another involves a titanic industrial effort in several stages. First, “A robust thermal market (…) finance and accelerate the transition to electric cars ”, says the group, thanks in particular to a reduction in costs (reduction in fixed costs of 5% in two years, purchase costs of 7%, fewer models, fewer engines).

Reduced manufacturing costs

Then, environmental standards restricting the profitability of combustion engines, it is the electrical margin that will take over with reduced manufacturing costs, achieved thanks to the organization around a single universal electrical industrial platform called ” SSP ”(Scalable Systems Platform), which will replace the current five (three thermal, two electric) from 2026 and guarantee synergies “Unmatched”.

The drop in cost will be driven by the installation of six gigafactories of batteries in Europe

The drop in the cost of electric cars will also be driven by the establishment of six gigafactories of batteries in Europe. The first, in Sweden, built with the start-up Northvolt, will be operational in 2023. The second will be built in northern Germany, in collaboration with the Chinese Gotion High-Tech (and not Northvolt, as previously announced) and will go into production in 2025. Volkswagen has said that Spain, where the group plans to locate its production of small electric vehicles, will be the third country of presence.

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